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Satabdi Roy’s latest film ‘Om Shanti’ is a potboiler with all the neccessary ingredients present, but alas, it falls short on a big scale. Just like her last film, the film begins with the youth , hints at a romance and takes a complete u turn. There is also a old romance existing between a mid aged couple just like in Fight 1:1(the only difference in the former, they were no longer together).

Tapas Pal, the director’s close friend who acts in all her films is there in this film as well potraying a larger than life role as Aditya Narayan Choudhury, a much revered person who is a like a fuedal lord of Pratapgarh. His chilhood love who he could never get close to, due to his father , runs a N.G.O , but they haven’t met in all these years. Alongside Rahul and Bannya are very good friends. Arko who owns the house from where the N.G.O operates joins the college and becomes good friends of Rahul and Bannya though there is initial relunctance on their part and Bannya even falls in love with Arko, but he turns her down. Aditya Narayan becomes a victim of the terrible plot hatched by Manjil(his manager, a cop and his Raj Purohit. The Raj Purohit becomes a king maker. Aditya Narayan gets badly injured in a tussle with the Purohit’s honchos. He comes out of the hospital and finds himself to be a pauper. He outwits the Raj Purohit and his group in an unique way. Before that, Arko joins that group. Who is Arko actually? What happens at the end? Does Aditya Narayan get back everything and teach the others lesson? Well, a lot happens actually!

The problem with Satabdi’s film is that there are 2 many sub plots and this film specially is a mess. A lot of things happen without any reason. Tapas Pal has a larger than life role as Aditya Narayan and he is the best of the lot. The film has pace and probably is watchable, but there are more than a couple of things which happen makes things very improbable at times. To begin with, one of the college students is 40 year old wearing half pants, but he has to be a college student for the sake of the film. Then Arko wears a vest in college. On hearing of Aditya Narayan ‘s death, Ananya(Rituparna) goes into a trance like dance which has no reason. Tapas Pal emerges from the dead just for the film as the recent trend continues of heroes surviving even after being pumped with 6 bullets just to finish off the evil force. The acting of the new female lead Samiksha is terrible and Arko is just about bearable. Paying Rakhi Sawant an exorbitant sum of money has added nothing to the film. Filmmakers should realise that though nearly every one of them adds an item song to their film nowadays as that seems to be the flavour of the season, it adds to nothing and even results in nothing, so they need to forego this point. Why, that song wasn’t even required in this film(In most cases they aren’t required). Satabdi Roy’s chic look seems out of place and doesn’t quite suit her. She tried a similar look in her last film Fight 1:1 as well, but all these things don’t go with her image. Victor Banerjee plays the evil Raj Purohit with elan. Regarding the music though the film has 6 songs by six music directors and six lyricists, the songs have no recall value barring a couple of songs sung by Anupam Roy, Ankita and Rupam Islam.

Satabdi has proved that she can make a potboiler , but if she could have taken care about the improbabilities, it would have been much better.